To the Victor Goes the Spoils
by smileyanne
Summary: This is a little fic from Lena's POV concerning Callie's 'decision' to go live with Robert. But focuses on her point of view of the different dynamics in the family. Especially Callie & Stef's and Callie & Lena. NO bashing.


_A/N: So this is a little fic that I've been working on for some time. But first of all there are somethings I need to get straight. This is NOT a Lena bashing fic. It's simply a fic from her POV that acknowledges the bond between Stef and Callie. I'm not saying that they're favoring any children or parents over the others. But from the way the writers have plotted things, it's simply acknowledge that there IS more of a bond between Stef and Callie then Lena and Callie. Nothing bad or anything just different. Just like there is more of a bond between Jude and Lena than Stef and Jude._

 _So just to be clear. NO LENA BASHING_

 _Disclaimer: I don't own the Fosters._

* * *

The night Callie tells them; Lena cries. Long after the children have been safely tucked away in their beds; Lena lies on her side of the bed, her face buried in a pillow, and let's the tears stream down her face.

She's heartbroken, the words, "I think I should go live with Robert," echoing around in her head. They're deafening, an unexpected blow.

Though she's torn to pieces at Callie's apparent decision. She's accepting of it. Robert is Callie's flesh and blood; and if there's anyone to understand that allure it's her, she supposes that has to be a factor to a girl who thought she shared DNA with only the dead.

So even though it hurts like hell, her seemingly out of the left field decision; Lena will accept it. She'll support her daughter whole heartedly if this is what she really wants, and she won't question it.

While Lena has her face buried in a pillow; coming to terms with Callie's decision. Her wife on the otherhand, was taking a different approach. Turning her tear streaked face to the side; she could see her wife pacing back and forth beside the bed, her fingers running messily through her hair. Her eyes...her eyes were wild.

Words like, "house", "blackmail", and "bastard" were being muttered from between her lips. Lena wanted to tell her to come lie down beside her, where they could both safely cry their eyes out all night long. But she could see, even from this distance, that impressive stubborness Stef employed coming into play. And she knew, as surely as she knew her own name and how many children she had, that she would be the only one crying tonight.

If only she could know the future trouble her impressively stubborn wife would be getting into.

* * *

Lena had no clue the day she'd call Bill what would happen. Her original intention had simply been about seeing into Ana, the twins' birth mother. Something Mariana had been bugging her and Stef about for months. And Lena was only too happy to finally be getting it done and over with.

Yet, Bill on the other hand wasn't having as good of a day as she apparently was. Lena, being the empathetic person she was; had listened to his lamenting troubles. And, before her mind could even catch up to what she was agreeing to, she was standing outside of the juvenile detention center.

A bruised and beaten girl standing in front of her. A man she didn't even know presenting her with the proposition of 'just a few weeks'.

At the time Lena had looked into the girl's eyes, and made one fatal mistake-she had tried to read them. She had looked and saw something there, something she had thought was screaming "please just take a chance on me".

Lena had always been great at reading most people. And it wasn't until days later that she realized Callie wasn't going to be one of them.

* * *

That, was not their start. Meeting Callie outside in that parking lot, having to endure that painful dinner with Stef the first night, and the stressful hours afterwards...

Those moments were like the beginning of a movie. Where they played a really sappy song and showed the credits at the bottom of scenic views. Sure, technically, it was the beginning.

But their start, their start (and their end) was the moment they stood outside that awful man's house. Callie, their son, and the boy they hadn't known about; tucked safely away in the back of Stef's car.

And Stef, her beautiful wife who had immediately clashed with the girl, had stood their and said those three little words-

"We'll make room."

* * *

In the oncoming days, weeks, months; their family... _changed_.

Lena was proud of the way their children grew and accepted their newcomers. Opening up to them, that, the surface issues, were never really the problem. It was what was happening behind the scenes that became an issue.

Ana, ID's, pills, Mike, drugs, drinking, blue nail polish...all of it.

Both Stef and Lena were sucked into it all, and more...Secrets and lies, heartbreak and loss.

Yet somehow, in the middle of it all, Lena found her heart taken by the youngest addition in their family-a sweet little boy named Jude.

It wasn't that she necessarily favored one child over the other. Just that she found it easy to bond with the sweet boy who was trying to learn who he was. In a way, he reminded her of herself at that age.

To think, it all started over something as simple as blue nail polish.

* * *

That...incident was the first time something was made clear to Lena. While she may understand her kind-hearted Mariana, her hyper Jesus, and her sweet Jude...

Callie was something else. Something hardened in a way that Lena (try as she might) could not understand or comprehend.

At the time she hadn't realized what was happening. It wasn't until their one normal day when Lena was forced to come face-to-face with it.

They were making breakfast; Jesus and Mariana already chowing down on their respective Saturday breakfast choices. Stef had the day off and Lena was helping fix meals for the rest of the children.

She got Jude settled with his scrambled eggs. Brandon with the fruit loops he would never admit to loving, and then Callie came down the stairs.

Usually she was one of the first ones up; she and Stef already dressed and in the kitchen by the time Lena and the rest of the kids trooped down during the weekdays. Lena hadn't questioned it as their newest daughter sleepily sat at her spot at the table. A bowl of oatmeal appearing magically in front of her by Stef's steady hand.

Lena had grabbed a glass; pouring a generous amount of milk for the girl. But before she could even make it to the table, a gentle hand shot out and stopped her.

Stef wasn't even looking at her; too busy pulling down three mugs from the cabinet. Still she informed Lena over the din five kids make-

"Too much dairy makes her sick."

Then, without even looking at her, she poured three cups of coffee. Taking one for herself, she sat another in front of Callie, and left the last one on the counter for Lena.

Stef had said it so calmly, like it was no big deal. And really, it wasn't. If dairy had been a deadly allergy it would've been in Callie's file. Something Lena had already memorized; along with Jude's, Mariana's, and Jesus' s.

It hadn't been there, meaning it was either something Stef had observed in the girl, or Callie had miraculously felt secure enough to confid in Stef a perceived weakness. Lena had a mental list of every like and dislike of the twins, a good sense of what Brandon cared for and what he didn't, and was beginning to be fairly well versed in Jude's likes and dislikes after only a few months.

Dairy...Lena'd had no clue.

The cup of coffee went cold on the counter that morning, and Lena drank the milk.

* * *

And during all of that, there had been this _big, huge,_ storm cloud that Callie had been hiding so expertly. Not that Lena blamed the girl; she was sure that there would always be some things about Callie Jacobs that she and stuff wouldn't know. Things that Callie either didn't deem important enough to tell them, or that she didn't _want_ to tell them.

But when she had walked through the door with Brandon that night…..there was no way that they could've _ever_ been prepared for what would follow.

The revelation that Callie had been violated in the way that she had; it affected the whole family. Maybe not overtly so, but the tension that followed….it had ways of seeping into every little nook and cranny of their everyday lives.

That was just what happened when someone you _love_ tells you that they were raped. Violated in such a horrifically personal way by someone she should've been able to trust! Then to be informed that the offender was actively torturing her in the present day?

Both women knew the dangers that came along with the foster system. Lena because of her activism and involvement with the twins and such, Stef…because she was confronted with those horrors nearly on a daily basis.

She was aware that Stef had always had her more than accurate suspicions about Callie's past. And she had too, to an extent. After all, you didn't bring a girl home from juvie, covered in bruises, and turn a blind eye.

But to believe that such a thing had happened to her? By the look on her wife's face, she knew it was something that she had never— _ever_ —wanted to think about.

Lena always knew that while horrified and hurt for the girl sitting so nervously in front of them….If the look in her wife's eyes was anything to go by, she would need to be the voice of reason in the following events.

While she knew that Callie did trust her not to hurt her or her brother; she was fairly sure that she wouldn't have been the first to be informed of Liam. Not because they would actively try and keep it from her, but while the other children of the house typically confessed all to her...Callie tended to lean toward Stef more in that respect.

She knew why she had been informed at the time as her wife. Lena _was_ the voice of reason; she was the one responsible for keeping Stef from walking out the door and committing murder.

* * *

She had been right then; she had needed to be the voice of reason. Not that it was an easy task, or one that she relished in. But she found that it had helped to throw her attentions into Jude and the twins….

The _children_ in the house that she realized did actively need a mama.

Not that Callie didn't need them. She liked to believe that Callie had needed them, just not in the ways the others had.

From the moment Callie had entered their lives she had never needed Stef and Lena to cuddle her. She didn't need them to bandage her wounds and kiss her boo-boos. Homework help, lunch money, and any other of the other little things that were so ingrained in mothers…..

Those were little trivialities that she had never needed nor asked for. Callie hadn't needed them for those tasks; she had been doing those for herself and Jude for so long that to try and take away that independence from her would be a hardship.

Truth be told, it had intimidated Lena just a little.

Looking back she realized the reasons why that was. Callie's attitude towards her had never really been cold, but a sort of indifference that Lena was never use to.

Lena was the type of mother that strived off the cuddles and emotional talks. Off the boo-boos and the kisses on the foreheads. And in the beginning she had tried that with Callie, only to be rebuffed with every attempt. Eventually, that had morphed into trying to make sure that Jude was not forgotten in the mix. That if Callie wouldn't let her do what she was good at for her, then maybe she would eventually let her do it for Jude.

That was the stigma for her relationship with Callie. It wasn't cold like it had been in the beginning, and she knew that the girl had come to love her just she had her. But their relationship would never be like her and Mari's, or even her and Jude's. She had come to accept that as for the best. Better not to push something awkward and unfitting onto the girl just to make themselves both unhappy.

After all, Callie had never needed a mother.

* * *

The twins, when they came to them, were so young. They remembered the foster system more than they remembered their birth mother.

Brandon had always had Stef, and Lena wasn't so self-conscious as to depreciate the impact she had had on his life. She had been apart of his life at such a young age that he had even admitted to her before that while he remembered what life was like before her and Stef; his major moments always had her in them. In his words, she was his Mama, plain and simple.

Jude on the other hand was different, he too had entered the foster system at a young age. And had spent so long being bounced around in it, that he had gradually forced himself to forget what fragmented memories he had of a normal life. Making himself forget the ghost of a mother that he couldn't even remember clearly, and focus on the mother that he had always known—Callie.

Callie was his best friend, his protector, his sister, his provider—his mother. But Jude was mature enough through experience that as much as she tried, he knew and understood that she was still just a kid herself doing the best she could. Sacrificing herself in an effort to make sure he never went without.

It was a valiant and noble cause, making it one of the reasons why Jude had been so quick to realize the benefits their had family offered to them. Maybe if they stayed, then Callie could have a life?

The young woman herself had never cared about that. As far as she was concerned, she _was_ a mother. Doing her best to fight against an unjust system that threatened every day to take her away from her last link to her past. Her last link to the only father she had every known, and the mother she had loved so terribly much.

The mother that she still grieved over every day.

Callie had had a mother, and she didn't need two virtual strangers trying to take the revered woman's place when she was almost grown. It wasn't fair to Callie and it wasn't fair to the woman who had automatically been given the right to call herself her mother. And that was why Lena had backed off.

She hadn't needed a mother, no. What she had needed was a safe place to rest her head at night, a house she could leave her brother alone at without her constant supervision without fear, a home for her brother-not that she would ever admit to needing one herself.

Callie needed someone she trusted enough to tell her secrets to. Someone she could tell her grief to, her problems, and maybe someone she could accept stability from.

Someone who would tell her that _she mattered._

* * *

Things did not go smoothly after the night Callie told them her decision to move in with Robert.

While Lena accepted it, it was harder for Stef. She suspected foul play, a motive, she was looking for a reason— _any at all._ Her wife was _so_ desperate for a reason about why they were losing her.

So caught up in her conspiracy theories and motives; Lena worried about her wife. She would be so caught up in her work that she wouldn't allow herself the grief she knew the woman felt in spades. The heart wrenching the grief that made her feel…. _unwanted._

It was almost like a windup toy, the way she worked, only so many turns in her until she ran out of steam. And that was when, in the middle of an otherwise lighthearted night, Stef broke.

"I just can't believe we're losing her."

Her voice, so desolate sounding; broke Lena's heart all over again. And with her blonde head tucked against her shoulder; silent tears shaking her thin frame—Lena realized something.

While she hadn't been able to provide what Callie needed, _Stef_ had. Stef had been the firm hand that was needed for Callie to speak the harsh truths to. The firm hand that was enough to get her to open up and be able to reassure her, but also brought out Stef's other side. The side that was cuddles and soothing words and emotional responses that weren't covered in anger.

Stef was never cold, _ever_. But in her line of work a certain amount of tolerance was required that sometimes made a person icy. Callie herself, had been the catalyst needed to melt that icy sheen Stef had built up.

As an outsider looking on, it was a remarkable thing to experience. Seeing the way Stef could provide the rough and tumble teen with a sense of security like no other. While the teen herself was able to make the hardcore cop simply loosen up and _smile_ sometimes….

It was amazing how alike the two were. At times Lena would swear that Stef had been in the girl's life from the very beginning.

Yet, that wasn't the case. They had been gifted Callie Jacobs too late in life it seemed. And when they were finally on track to getting her permanently, the rug was snatched cruelly out from underneath them.

Lena held her shaking wife tighter and breathed deeply.

DNA she kept telling herself. That was all it came down to.

* * *

Later she would hate herself. Why had she not trusted Stef? Sure she may have been grief-stricken, but she had long ago learned never to discount the woman's natural instincts…..

Hadn't she learned anything this far in the game? She loved Callie, but when it came to the understanding portion of the game—Stef took the gold in that.

It didn't matter though, not in what followed. Now not only was Lena herself angry with Robert, but the man (no matter how many lawyers he had at his disposal) he had a _furious_ Stef attacking him with no remorse or hesitation.

What had once been a one-sided sneak attack approach, turned into a downright battle.

Oh, and if she knew her wife at all…..

She had no doubt who would be the victor.

* * *

 _A/N: Please just don't bash this to bash this. If you just actually HATED it than don't review. But if you would like to add a constructive thought to the process, I would love to hear it._


End file.
